BUDAPEST, January 25. /TASS/. The NATO expansion process is poorly thought out and undemocratic, Hungarian Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover said in an interview with online media outlet Index.

When asked to comment on the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance and Sweden’s plans to join it following in Finland’s footsteps, he said: "Although the entire NATO expansion process is marked by an astonishing lack of a well-thought-out basis and democratic underpinnings commensurate with the seriousness of the issue, the parliamentary majority behind the [Hungarian] government supports it (NATO expansion - TASS) in principle." Kover pointed out that the delay in Budapest’s ratification of Sweden’s NATO accession protocol stemmed from lawmakers’ discontent with the unfriendly statements that Swedish politicians have made about the state of democracy in Hungary.

The speaker noted that Hungary’s parliament backed the government’s position on Sweden’s NATO membership. "However, in a democracy, it is parliament that has the last word, not the government," the speaker stressed.

On January 23, Turkish lawmakers passed a bill ratifying the formal protocol approving Sweden’s accession to NATO. Now, Hungary remains the only member of the alliance whose parliament has not yet ratified Stockholm’s membership application. A parliamentary press service representative told TASS that a date for a hearing on the matter was to be set by the chamber committee chaired by Kover. On March 27, 2023, Hungary’s parliament greenlighted Finland’s NATO accession but postponed the consideration of Sweden’s bid. The two Nordic countries applied for NATO membership simultaneously on May 18, 2022, saying that the move had been prompted by developments in Ukraine.